A Weblog by One Humble Bookman on Topics of Interest to Discerning Readers, Including (Though Not Limited To) Science Fiction, Books, Random Thoughts, Fanciful Family Anecdotes, Publishing, Science Fiction, The Mating Habits of Extinct Waterfowl, The Secret Arts of Marketing, Other Books, Various Attempts at Humor, The Wonders of New Jersey, the Tedious Minutiae of a Boring Life, Science Fiction, No Accounting (For Taste), And Other Weighty Matters.

Who Is This Hornswoggler?

Andrew Wheeler has had a varied career in publishing and related fields. He spent 16 years as a bookclub editor (mostly for the Science Fiction Book Club), and then moved into marketing. He marketed books and related products to accountants for Wiley for eight years, and now works for Thomson Reuters on large online legal products. He was a judge for the 2005 World Fantasy Awards and the 2008 Eisner Awards. He also reviewed a book a day for a year twice. He lives with The Wife and two mostly tame sons (Thing One, born 1998; and Thing Two, born 2000) at an unspecified location in suburban New Jersey. He has been known to drive a minivan, and nearly all of his writings are best read in a tone of bemused sarcasm. Antick Musings’s manifesto is here. All opinions expressed here are entirely and purely those of Andrew Wheeler, and no one else.

Friday, September 21, 2007

My job search is over; I'm starting my new job on Monday after being unemployed almost exactly four months. I am now a Marketing Manager for John Wiley in Hoboken, which means I'll have to stop referring to myself as an editor -- I am now officially a "publishing professional."

Some editors are not fond of marketing people, but I always got along well with them at my old shop -- which was good, since the nature of the bookclub business meant that we worked very closely together, and much of what I did was more marketing than editorial to begin with. From what various Wiley people have told me about their organization, the relationships among marketing, editorial, and creative services is similarly collaborative at Wiley, so it should feel like home.

There are probably a few of you shaking your heads at the word "Marketing," but wait! it gets even more interesting. The line of books I'll be working on is...Accounting! Stable, dependable, successful, and unlikely to steal my weekend reading time. It's not much like science fiction, but SF wasn't much like hunting & fishing, large print, or playscripts, and I worked on all of those for years at a time at the bookclubs. Wiley has an array of strong brands and market-leading expertise, and I am very excited to be joining their team.

Other good things:

Marketing pays better than Editorial in general

I'm working in New Jersey, so good-bye to double state taxation

I will now get to work on a train, not a bus

My new office will be barely two blocks from the train station

I don't expect to say much at all about my day-job from this point forward; I don't think anyone would care, for one thing. And I never wrote much about the day-to-day stuff at the clubs to begin with; descriptions of office work are either boring or legally actionable, and I try to avoid both of those categories.

So, until I get the laptop I've been thinking about (and maybe can post at lunchtimes), Antick Musings will only get updates nights and weekends. But I've got several things stacked up from this week, so I hope to post a flurry of things this weekend, before I start the 9-5 thing again. Reviews will continue -- I actually read more while commuting than when at home, with the distractions of kids and computer -- so if anyone has stuff for possible review, please contact me.

Update, later in the day: A couple of people have asked, here or in e-mail, whether I'll still be going to conventions. I'm planning on still doing a few, but they won't count as business trips anymore and I won't be on an expense account, so I'll probably be pickier. I'll definitely be at World Fantasy in Saratoga this year and almost certainly at Lunacon in March. After that, I'm not sure of my precise plans -- it depends on timing and other issues. I'd love to go to Worldcon in Denver, but I don't know how likely that is. (Ditto next year's WFC in Calgary.) But I'll certainly still be around, one way or another.

I'm in the same position in my job, working as a computer programmer on a telecommunications server. I don't use the product I am working on. In fact I don't even think my phone company uses it. That can make it a bit hard to stay motivated at times.

Congrats congrats congrats! Will you be able/willing to do any conventioning? I know that Wiley probably won't see the benefit of sending you to a con, but my Dad's a retired CPA, so we could always do some business talk.